How Media Helps Companies Reach Otherwise Impossible Audiences

If you’ve ever had a phone call on a bad connection, you know how annoying it
is to be interrupted by static or background noise when you’re trying to have a
conversation. Unfortunately for marketers, that’s how most customers feel about
marketing tactics--campaigns, ads, and emails feel cumbersome, annoying, and
invasive. Consumers also have more ways than ever to block out traditional
marketing—from TiVo to Gmail’s Priority Inbox to Do Not Call lists, finding and
acquiring customers seems harder than ever, but it doesn’t have to be. Below
are three tactics for using media to reach otherwise impossible audiences, and
examples of how innovative companies have leveraged traditional and social
media alike to find, engage, and convert customers.

1. Video Killed the Radio Star…and Found You New Customers:Memphis Invest is a real estate investment firm located in Memphis, Tennessee.
The company is unique in that 97% of their clients live more than 100 miles
from their location, so “getting found” by customers was a significant
challenge that seemed either impossible or cost-prohibitive. Using HubSpot,
Memphis Invest developed an inbound strategy that included significant content
creation. In addition to blogging and social media, the Memphis Invest team
also created videos on everything from customer success stories to
familiarizing prospects with the process of investing with their team, efforts
that helped assuage fears about investing from afar. The videos, combined with a broader inbound
strategy, helped Memphis Invest attract more than 4,000 inbound links and
rank highly on highly competitive keywords, resulting in more visitors, leads,
and customers than they ever could have reached in their metro market through
traditional advertising.

Videos
are one of the easiest vehicles around to showcase your brand’s personality and
show people who you are rather than just telling them. Ultimately, customers
want to do business with people they like, admire, and trust, and video content
is an often under-utilized vehicle to attract and convert new clients.

2. Facebook: Where Presidents, Quarterbacks, and Your Customers
Intersect: For most college
students, senior year is a time to coast and enjoy the ride. Not so for Peter
Smathers Carter and Austin Branson, who, like me, attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. After receiving needlepoint
belts as a gift from their respective girlfriends, the friends decided to get
into the preppy belt business and spent their senior spring working on a
business plan with help from their professors. They spent countless hours
on sourcing, traveling to Vietnam developing unique designs, and FedExing
material samples. With the idea, product, and brand complete, the pair launched
Smathers & Branson, identified retailers in notoriously preppy enclaves throughout
the Northeast to carry their belts, and grew both their product line and
revenues in partnership with these retailers.

To
take their brand to the next level, the pair elected to invest in customizing
their product for key audiences (they quickly figured out that boats, bourbon,
and lacrosse are all big hits with prep aficionados) instead of an expensive
advertising strategy. But to build a national marketplace for their belts and
continue to expand licensing agreements with schools and alumni associations,
the pair needed to drive additional awareness. Media placements in Town &
Country, Inc. Magazine,
and FOX Business
provided a great catalyst, and the S&B team built upon those PR hits by
launching a Facebook page.

Visitors
to the S&B page can view photos of everyone from Presidents (both President
Clinton and President Bush, Sr) to quarterbacks (Eli Manning rocks the Ole Miss belt,
while Peyton opts for Tennessee)
sporting custom needlepoint gear alongside contests, examples of product usage,
and profiles of retailers who carry their items. Creating a company Facebook
page is no longer a luxury; it’s a critical medium for companies big and small,
and smart entrepreneurs like Austin and Peter have combined PR with Facebook to
drive awareness, retail partnerships, and ultimately revenue.

3. Give is the New Get: Conventional marketing is not for the faint of heart—fighting for
premium location at a trade show or persuading a magazine publisher to give you
the inside cover means your marketing efforts might leave you with a few
scratches or bruises. Great companies think differently, providing remarkable
content that engages customers in a new and meaningful way.

A
striking example of “give is the new get” comes through Justin & Mary
Marantz, Connecticut-based wedding photographers.
Instead of focusing on paid tactics, Justin & Mary took an inbound approach
to marketing their business. Rather than the typical reluctance to post their
images on social media for fear of people copying them without credit, the
Marantzes share both their photography and their admiration for other vendors
generously. After each wedding, they post highlights of the event to their
blog, Facebook, and Twitter, all of which have developed loyal followings. In
each post, they link to any other vendors who participated, from caterers to
event planners to bands and florists. They even include
the venue of the wedding in the title of each post to optimize for SEO when
newly engaged couples are searching for locations.

To
further expand their reach, they even post regular “Pancake Sessions” (so named
because they assert that launching a business can be messy, sticky, and
wonderful, much like pancake prep) with tips, tricks, and strategies for other
photographers and host “Spread the Love” workshops for other small business
owners to share best practices. In addition to securing high-quality customers,
their strategy helped expand their universe of possible customers and forge
great relationships with other vendors. What’s not to love about that?

In summary, acquiring new customers for many small and medium sized
businesses can be expensive and tiring, but it doesn’t have to be. Use videos
to show customers your personality, get as much life as possible from media
hits by establishing a social media presence to promote and engage prospects,
and give generously of your time and energy on social media to drive
referrals. The result? Marketing people love, and customers who appreciate your
efforts.

Comments

If you’ve ever had a phone call on a bad connection, you know how annoying it
is to be interrupted by static or background noise when you’re trying to have a
conversation. Unfortunately for marketers, that’s how most customers feel about
marketing tactics--campaigns, ads, and emails feel cumbersome, annoying, and
invasive. Consumers also have more ways than ever to block out traditional
marketing—from TiVo to Gmail’s Priority Inbox to Do Not Call lists, finding and
acquiring customers seems harder than ever, but it doesn’t have to be. Below
are three tactics for using media to reach otherwise impossible audiences, and
examples of how innovative companies have leveraged traditional and social
media alike to find, engage, and convert customers.

1. Video Killed the Radio Star…and Found You New Customers:Memphis Invest is a real estate investment firm located in Memphis, Tennessee.
The company is unique in that 97% of their clients live more than 100 miles
from their location, so “getting found” by customers was a significant
challenge that seemed either impossible or cost-prohibitive. Using HubSpot,
Memphis Invest developed an inbound strategy that included significant content
creation. In addition to blogging and social media, the Memphis Invest team
also created videos on everything from customer success stories to
familiarizing prospects with the process of investing with their team, efforts
that helped assuage fears about investing from afar. The videos, combined with a broader inbound
strategy, helped Memphis Invest attract more than 4,000 inbound links and
rank highly on highly competitive keywords, resulting in more visitors, leads,
and customers than they ever could have reached in their metro market through
traditional advertising.

Videos
are one of the easiest vehicles around to showcase your brand’s personality and
show people who you are rather than just telling them. Ultimately, customers
want to do business with people they like, admire, and trust, and video content
is an often under-utilized vehicle to attract and convert new clients.

2. Facebook: Where Presidents, Quarterbacks, and Your Customers
Intersect: For most college
students, senior year is a time to coast and enjoy the ride. Not so for Peter
Smathers Carter and Austin Branson, who, like me, attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. After receiving needlepoint
belts as a gift from their respective girlfriends, the friends decided to get
into the preppy belt business and spent their senior spring working on a
business plan with help from their professors. They spent countless hours
on sourcing, traveling to Vietnam developing unique designs, and FedExing
material samples. With the idea, product, and brand complete, the pair launched
Smathers & Branson, identified retailers in notoriously preppy enclaves throughout
the Northeast to carry their belts, and grew both their product line and
revenues in partnership with these retailers.

To
take their brand to the next level, the pair elected to invest in customizing
their product for key audiences (they quickly figured out that boats, bourbon,
and lacrosse are all big hits with prep aficionados) instead of an expensive
advertising strategy. But to build a national marketplace for their belts and
continue to expand licensing agreements with schools and alumni associations,
the pair needed to drive additional awareness. Media placements in Town &
Country, Inc. Magazine,
and FOX Business
provided a great catalyst, and the S&B team built upon those PR hits by
launching a Facebook page.

Visitors
to the S&B page can view photos of everyone from Presidents (both President
Clinton and President Bush, Sr) to quarterbacks (Eli Manning rocks the Ole Miss belt,
while Peyton opts for Tennessee)
sporting custom needlepoint gear alongside contests, examples of product usage,
and profiles of retailers who carry their items. Creating a company Facebook
page is no longer a luxury; it’s a critical medium for companies big and small,
and smart entrepreneurs like Austin and Peter have combined PR with Facebook to
drive awareness, retail partnerships, and ultimately revenue.

3. Give is the New Get: Conventional marketing is not for the faint of heart—fighting for
premium location at a trade show or persuading a magazine publisher to give you
the inside cover means your marketing efforts might leave you with a few
scratches or bruises. Great companies think differently, providing remarkable
content that engages customers in a new and meaningful way.

A
striking example of “give is the new get” comes through Justin & Mary
Marantz, Connecticut-based wedding photographers.
Instead of focusing on paid tactics, Justin & Mary took an inbound approach
to marketing their business. Rather than the typical reluctance to post their
images on social media for fear of people copying them without credit, the
Marantzes share both their photography and their admiration for other vendors
generously. After each wedding, they post highlights of the event to their
blog, Facebook, and Twitter, all of which have developed loyal followings. In
each post, they link to any other vendors who participated, from caterers to
event planners to bands and florists. They even include
the venue of the wedding in the title of each post to optimize for SEO when
newly engaged couples are searching for locations.

To
further expand their reach, they even post regular “Pancake Sessions” (so named
because they assert that launching a business can be messy, sticky, and
wonderful, much like pancake prep) with tips, tricks, and strategies for other
photographers and host “Spread the Love” workshops for other small business
owners to share best practices. In addition to securing high-quality customers,
their strategy helped expand their universe of possible customers and forge
great relationships with other vendors. What’s not to love about that?

In summary, acquiring new customers for many small and medium sized
businesses can be expensive and tiring, but it doesn’t have to be. Use videos
to show customers your personality, get as much life as possible from media
hits by establishing a social media presence to promote and engage prospects,
and give generously of your time and energy on social media to drive
referrals. The result? Marketing people love, and customers who appreciate your
efforts.